Posted
by
samzenpuson Tuesday January 31, 2012 @12:20PM
from the it's-the-thrill-of-the-fight dept.

First time accepted submitter Joe_Dragon writes "The composer of the Survivor hit Eye of the Tiger has sued Newt Gingrich to stop the Republican presidential candidate from using the Rocky III anthem at campaign events. The lawsuit was filed Monday in federal court in Chicago by Rude Music Inc., the Palatine-based music publishing company owned by Frank Sullivan, who, with Jim Peterik, composed the song and copyrighted it in 1982. The lawsuit states that as early as 2009, Gingrich has entered rallies and public events to the pulsing guitar riffs of the song. In a lengthy section of the five-page complaint, Rude's attorneys point out that Gingrich is well aware of copyright laws, noting he is listed as author or co-author of more than 40 published works and has earned between $500,000 to $1 million from Gingrich Productions, a company that sells his written work, documentaries and audio books. It also notes Gingrich's criticism of the 'Stop Online Piracy Act' during a recent debate in South Carolina, where Gingrich suggested the law was unnecessary because 'We have a patent office, we have copyright law. If a company finds it has genuinely been infringed upon, it has the right to sue.' The suit asks for an injunction to prevent Gingrich from using the song, as well as damages and attorneys' fees to be determined by the court."

My guess was that the Slashdot collective was going to have an anuerysm over deciding which side to pick. On one side of the ring you have despicable Republican Newt Gingrich. On the other side you have evil copyright.

Government officials should be held accountable to the laws they create and enforce. This is *ESPECIALLY* true when the law is a bad law that blocks people from doing things that are completely reasonable. That helps ensure that "they" feel the same pain as "us," which in turn furthers the cause of getting the bad laws corrected.

A lot of people here own copyrights (registered or not) and would appreciate some protection. Very few people have said "screw it, download everything".

GPL is advertised as fighting copyright with copyright, and it would be unimportant without copyright. But without copyright, all you have is public domain and trade secrets. There is no requirement to release code changes unless you personally contract with everyone who wants to download your code. Hosting a tarball with a license and expecting people to follow the license does not exist, because there is no basis of enforcement. A license with a public domain download is not enforceable.

I believe the maximum copyright should be no more than 28 years, and several people have come up with 14 as the optimal length. Copyright is only evil because 1) it is excessively long, effectively infinite 2) enforcement such as DRM abridges fair use, especially if the DRM has not been broken when something that uses it is in the public domain.

Oh, I'm sure you're right. Copyright law gives them the right to control distribution and public performance, however, and it makes no mention of what motives they may use to do so.

Frankly I consider it win-win: Either a judge finds copyright law absurd and lets Gingrich keep using it in pretty clear violation of copyright, or he orders him to stop and Gingrich gets spanked for his double standard. (Or he stops using it voluntarily, which I basically consider to be a non-judicial spanking in this case.)

Problem, though, is that the Gingrich campaign probably has a blanket license from ASCAP or BMI which would cover what he's doing with this song. Political campaigns always get them, even though the artists whose songs are used sometimes don't like it. After the Gingrich campaign sends a copy of the license, the suit will be quietly dropped, having done what it was intended to do -- express displeasure at Gingrich.

Alternatively, the campaign may stop using the song because the distraiction isn't worth it. If that's the case, then this really is abusive.

Wanting to control our population numbers is NOT RACIST. Wanting to impose controls on how many bodies we let into the country is NOT RACIST. Dont you think as a sovereign nation, we have the right to say who can and cannot come here? We dont have a vast frontier anymore, we dont need nor want a flood of unskilled dregs added to our society. The poem at her feet is old, outdated and DOES NOT APPLY TO THE MODERN WORLD. I fucking hate people who think that if desired, the whole world could move to the US.

I agree, but could you PLEASE keep the Americans you have over there and NOT let them out. This includes all you laws and products (Yes, including Internet. We just would like to have Hyper Text Markup Language and thus the web part back, thank you.)

Everything was invented in France. Occasionally, it was invented in France before it was invented elsewhere.
In keeping with this thread, the Statue of Liberty was invented in France, and was not commissioned having anything in particular to due with immigration to the U.S. It was a symbol of recognition of the alliance between the French and the American colonies during the American Revolution.

Yes - of course. But, let's not forget that the natives had spent millenia killing each other too.

Off on a tangent with that now. The "big news" in "immigration" (or, alternatively, "invasion") issues are Mexicans. Or, Azteca. Funny that today's Azteca seem to claim the land that they attempted to take by way of genocide for a thousand years before the white man came. "We killed millions of Apache before you whites ever showed up, so it should be OUR land!"

Unskilled dregs actually comes from our H1B requirements for visas. YOu dont get an H1B without having a skill we need. (technically anyways). I do not see the point of allowing unskilled people into our borders. Why would we do that? For what purpose?

I do not see the point of allowing unskilled people into our borders. Why would we do that? For what purpose?

Oh, I don't know. Perhaps because they are people who, like you, and want to live in a free country where you have a chance to pursue your dreams. If you look at America's history, immigrants seem to be hard working and ambitious. Quite frankly, we could use more of that right now, and not just a bunch of stupid complacence idiots who think the most important thing to be focusing on is teaching creationism in schools.

By your logic, shouldn't we expel all the white people who are unskilled, and let in all the African, Hispanic, Asian, and Arabic people who are educated and skilled? Go see how that flies with the Republican party.

Unless you are of native American descent, you have no fucking right to complain about the immigrants anyway, seeing as how you are one...

It's not a good point, it's a terrible point. When 75% of all illegal immigrants come from south of our border, it doesn't take a genius to figure why people from south of our border bear the brunt of complaints. And you DO hear, if you pay attention, complaints about illegal Asian immigrants, too, who make up 50% of the rest.

My wife is a foreign national and we had to go through the immigration process for her to receive her green card. We didn't use a lawyer, the process cost us about $2000 in filing fees and took about 9 months from filing until she had the card in her hand.

I'm typically more liberal when it comes to social issues but not on immigration. Name me one other developed nation that has such leniency for undocumented aliens.

I don't want to keep people out if they truely want to be here, they just have to follow the rules and do it the right way. If they sneak across the border and live in the shadows or under a false name and credentials.. I have no sympathy if they get caught and shipped back to their home country.

There are cheaper ways to gain temporary legal residency if $2000 is too much to apply for the green card. In that time money could be saved to eventually go through that process.

Cause I'm sure that all those people at Ellis Island had $2000 in their pockets to make that happen... I do agree that you should follow the legal process, but the cost can be prohibitive to many foreign nationals.

I do agree that you should follow the legal process, but the cost can be prohibitive to many foreign nationals.

To quote Milton Friedman:

"I have always been amused by a kind of a paradox. Suppose you go around and ask people 'The united States as you know before 1914 had completely free immigration. Anybody could get on a boat and come to these shores and if he landed on Ellis Island he was an immigrant. Was that a good thing or a bad thing?'

You will find that hardly a soul who will say that it was a bad thing. Almost everybody will say it was a good thing. ‘But what about today? Do you think we should have free immigration?’ ‘Oh, no,’ they’ll say, ‘We couldn’t possibly have free immigration today. Why, that would flood us with immigrants from India, and God knows where. We’d be driven down to a bare subsistence level.’

What’s the difference? How can people be so inconsistent? Why is it that free immigration was a good thing before 1914 and free immigration is a bad thing today? Well, there is a sense in which that answer is right. There’s a sense in which free immigration, in the same sense as we had it before 1914 is not possible today. Why not?

Because it is one thing to have free immigration to jobs. It is another thing to have free immigration to welfare. And you cannot have both. If you have a welfare state, if you have a state in which every resident is promised a certain minimal level of income, or a minimum level of subsistence, regardless of whether he works or not, produces it or not. Then it really is an impossible thing.

If you have free immigration, in the way we had it before 1914, everybody benefited. The people who were here benefited. The people who came benefited. Because nobody would come unless he, or his family, thought he would do better here than he would elsewhere. And, the new immigrants provided additional resources, provided additional possibilities for the people already here. So everybody can mutually benefit.

But on the other hand, if you come under circumstances where each person is entitled to a pro-rate share of the pie, to take an extreme example, or even to a low level of the pie, than the effect of that situation is that free immigration, would mean a reduction of everybody to the same, uniform level. Of course, I’m exaggerating, it wouldn’t go quite that far, but it would go in that direction. And it is that perception, that leads people to adopt what at first seems like inconsistent values.

Look, for example, at the obvious, immediate, practical example of illegal Mexican immigration. Now, that Mexican immigration, over the border, is a good thing. It’s a good thing for the illegal immigrants. It’s a good thing for the United States. It’s a good thing for the citizens of the country. But, it’s only good so long as its illegal.

That’s an interesting paradox to think about. Make it legal and it’s no good. Why? Because as long as it’s illegal the people who come in do not qualify for welfare, they don’t qualify for social security, they don’t qualify for the other myriad of benefits that we pour out from our left pocket to our right pocket. So long as they don’t qualify they migrate to jobs. They take jobs that most residents of this country are unwilling to take. They provide employers with the kind of workers that they cannot get. They’re hard workers, they’re good workers, and they are clearly better off."

As your spouse, your wife literally got to walk to the front of the line for her green card. As an immediate relative (spouse) she fits the category with no waiting period, and for which 226,000 green cards are allotted each year. In fact, she gets to step in front of every other category, including - child of citizen - 2 year waiting period, unless you are mexican - 4-5 year waiting period, or Filipino - 11 year waiting period, and then every other possible relation with increasing waiting periods just to get paperwork processed (up to 19 years in some cases).

Everyone else who wants to come here has to put their name into a lottery, from which only 55,000 are chosen each year.

It's easy to talk about how everyone should just do it the right way, when you are able to walk to the front of the line in front of those you are lecturing.

While I agree with your notion that people need to come here legally I think we can both agree the system is fairly broken. Like you, my wife is an immigrant and I found the process to be full of red tape, have no accountability (on USCIS's part), expensive (your paying ~$2000 for them to process your forms and more to get other documents and notarizations that you need), and leaves you wondering for months on end what is happening with your application and that's only if your lucky enough not to get stuck

Most people who strongly advocate against allowing illegals into the country and/or allowing them to become legal would be perfectly happy with laws that make it easier/cheaper for people to legally enter the country. What makes the problem worse is that the Mexican government actively encourages its citizens to illegally enter the U.S. as a pressure valve to release societal unrest over its policies that make advancement difiicult for many members of its society.
To summarize, most people who are calling for more stringent enforcement of immigration laws would be perfectly happy to accept increasing the quotas on the number of people allowed to enter the country legally. Interestingly, most of the opposition to expanding immigration quotas comes from within groups that favor lax enforcement of immigration laws (I have not done enough study of it to know if it is different subgroups that oppose expanded legal immigration vs those that favor lax enforcement of existing immigration laws or if it is that those groups want to keep the number of illegal immigrants high for other reasons. I suspect that it depends on the groups).

I am not quite sure where you got the idea that Mexico has light regulation. In Mexico, basically everything is illegal unless you are politically connected and/or can afford the bribes to get the regulators to look the other way (sort of where the U.S. is heading).

But how is this possible, Mexico has such light regulation, it should surely be a utopian land of opportunity devoid of sprawling slums!?

I think I see the logic here. Mexico is a disaster, hence, it must be a libertarian paradise!

It's interesting to compare the costs of various sorts of business transactions such as the World Bank has done (I gather they looked at a sample of businesses to get appropriate figures). Mexico [doingbusiness.org] fares much worse than its neighor, the United States [doingbusiness.org].

For example, it takes about 6 days and an average of $675 to start a business in the US versus 8-10 days and a bit over $1000 (at current exchange rate) for the Mex

Um, many of the biggest voices in conservatism are either legal immigrants, or they are eager to point out that they are children of legal immigrants (Erich Mancow Muller, Mark Steyn, Glenn Beck are all good examples).

It's the conservative voices that keep harping on the difference between legal immigrants and illegal immigrants.

Your understanding of conservatives is very, very shallow. Even Craig Ferguson, who starts out each night's show with "It's a great day for America", talks frequently at length abo

I think you just proved my point. Legal / Illegal immigration is not a race-based issue. People that don't understand the issues try to turn it into one.

The hatred towards Latinos today is actually mild compared to the hatred towards Swedes and Norwegians 50 years ago in the north.The hatred towards Latinos today is comparable to the hatred 70 years ago against Italians and Irish in New England.

Here's a good question for you. Now that Scandinavians have taken over the North (ie. Minnesota, Wisconsin), an

At the time, the Democrats were the party of racism, trying to keep the blacks in their place. The Republicans were the party fighting racism, in large part originally founded on the abolitionist platform.

This whole supposed flip-flop on who's racist only happened with Nixon's Southern Strategy. Until then, the Democrats were the party of the KKK. Remember Robert Byrd saying you couldn't be in Democratic politics down South unless you were KKK?

The great irony is that the Democrats remain the party which discriminates based on ethnicity and yet at the same time are the party which slanders a remarkable portion of the US population with the "racist" label.

The larger part is that most of these songs have lyrics and intentions to protest against common GOP policies and political positions. Having the refrain ripped off to further GOP election chances is spitting on the artist and the meaning of the lyrics themselves.

You may have noted that never, in the history of the country, have we cared about the artist or the meaning of lyrics. Yankee Doodle? An insulting song by Europeans about those silly American bumpkins and nabobs. And since Lexington and Concord it's been inseparable from the truly patriotic anthems. The Star Spangle Banner borrowed music from a number of songs before a old British tavern song finally stuck and it eventually became the national anthem. American Woman, Fortunate Son, Born in the USA, and a sl

Odds are it's not fair use, but they probably paid license fees to the necessary collection agencies to use the song. This is just the "creator" disliking the way the song is used which, despite bad publicity, is generally not illegal.

Fair use is slippery. There are situations where reproducing a whole text would be considered fair use, and situations where reproducing just a snippet would not be. In this instance a very distinctive part of the song is being used, promotionally, uncritically, and without modification so I'm not sure it really escapes.

I'm not sure that's a correct statement. Maybe it isn't direct, but he is using it in what essentially amounts to advertising. These events are not private parties, so the private party exemption (specific to music) is also gone.

I do believe, however, that Rude Music is in for a rude awakening because of a thing called compulsory licensing. In essence, they can collect money for their product, but they have to offer it to all comers, and, if memory serves me, they must do so with non-discriminatory pricing.

I'm fairly sure that public performance isn't ACTUALLY subject to compulsory licensing. It's just that virtually anyone who has enough money to bring a frivolous lawsuit is a member of a PRS like ASCAP or BMI. That said, including the 'right of public performance' in copyright seems totally idiotic to me in the first place. It's not producing a copy in a manner that couldn't be widely done before the printing press, and it conflicts with free speech. I can sort of see an argument for radio airplay, but

0) ". ..for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright." It is none of these.

1) "the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;" - Technically non-profit, but not for an educational purpose. Well, unless you count used to introduce a candidate to an event where he is educating them about himself. I think that is a bit too broad to work.

2) "the nature of the copyrighted work" - Neither a fact, idea or something as important to the public as the Zapruder film.

3) "the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and" - The whole thing isn't being played, but how much of it?

4) "the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work." - I don't think this would be allowed to apply here. If the song can be blasted in part for this event, why not others? At that point the value of the song begins to go down due to over use.

It could go either way, but I'm leaning against fair use. I'm leaning enough against it that I expect this to be quietly hushed up with a settlement.

As long as the music is not tied to any particular part of the event, it's covered under a venue's ASCAP license.

But.

If the music is synchronized to a video montage, or used as part of an announcement or otherwise synchronized with something, the campaign has entered into the area of "Synchroization Rights". These are covered on a contract-by-contract basis between the music publisher and the user.

"A synchronization or "synch" right involves the use of a recording of musical work in audio-visual form: for example as part of a motion picture, television program, commercial announcement, music video or other videotape. Often, the music is "synchronized" or recorded in timed relation with the visual images. Synchronization rights are licensed by the music publisher to the producer of the movie or program." (http://www.ascap.com/licensing/termsdefined.aspx)

There was a similar flap years ago between Chrissie Hinds (of the Pretenders) and Rush Limbaugh, who was using her song "Back to Ohio" as his opening and bump music. Thing is, Limbaugh paid the ASCAP and other associated licensing fees, so Hinds was basically told to bugger off (numerous times, and publicly on his show). I think she tried to sue, but discovered that she really couldn't do a damned thing about it.

My guess is that something very similar is the case here. Gingrich's campaign likely paid all the fees, and barring evidence otherwise, this guy is likely going to get told basically the same thing.

ASCAP/BMI/SESAC licensing fees cover public performance of a copyrighted work, which includes playing the recording in a bar, a cover band playing the song in a venue, playing the recording over the radio or on television, etc. The intention is to funnel some of the money that the venue is earning from playing your song back to the artist. These amounts tend to be relatively small, but prevent situations where radio stations, say, can make tons of money off of advertising around your song without paying any

How about, when they want to use someone's music as their theme tune, they ask them first? Throw a few cents their way? Maybe think about not being a dick, in addition to whether their actions are legally defensible?

You address your message only to Republican candidates? You are part of the problem.

Maybe when you're awkwardly doing so, think about changing music copyright laws if you get elected?

Do you want to know how congress 'fixes' this kind of thing? They create a special exemption for themselves. Like they are doing with their insider trading bill (which gives them MORE freedom to do insider trading than current law), and like they've done with the FOIA (they don't need to respond to FOIA requests).

More likely than not, he's registered with BMI or ASCAP. You can purchase global rights through those agencies. I'm fairly certain Gingrinch's campaign has dotted that 'i' and crossed that 't'.

If he hasn't then by all means tear him up - I hate the guy myself. But his is likely a case of a composer wanting to distance themselves from the politician who likes their music. That's not exactly a new phenomena by any stretch of the imagination.

I don't know why they don't check for permission first. Besides, Grinch Neutron hardly strikes me as a "Tiger". He probably should have contacted Ted Nugent and got the rights to "Cat Scratch Fever", would have suited him better.

I wonder if Sullivan bothered to simply send a letter to Gingrich asking him to stop using it? After all, it's been YEARS... sounds similar to a submarine patent, right? If Gingrich ignored such a request, then he's got it coming to him. I would feel pretty slimy using a song if I knew the composer didn't like it. That being said, he might be rationalizing a bit since co-writer Peterik is OK with it. I'm not sure what bearing Peterik's wishes have on this, as I don't know if he has a share in Rude Music

Why wouldn't a political candidate double check to make sure that the composers/artists/etc responsible for music their using in their campaign is, at worst, neutral towards them?

Because, quite frankly, if I had total legal control over a piece of art that some dickwad I didn't like was appropriating for PR purposes, my first instinct would be to do my own counter-PR version and dump it on whichever public channels I could find.

For instance, a youtube video set to "Eye of the Tiger" which just shows a picture of Gingrinch on a punching bag being pummeled by various disadvantaged types with captions explaining their beefs against him and the Republican party might be an effective way to develop a negative association between him and the song.

Why in the world would a political campaign risk pissing someone off like that?

In other news, a new bill has been introduced that exempts political candidates from using copyrighted works in their political ads. This will join the existing bill that exempts the idiots from telemarketing rules so they can call you whenever the hell they want with a recorded message asking for your vote. (Because I form all my political judgments from 30-second pre-recorded phone calls...)

How long before a law gets passed that exempts politicians from copyright restraint?It's a standard procedure to pass a law and then exempt themselves anyway. In the mean time, any of them can feel free to use the following:

(to the beat of "I like Big Butts")

I'm a rich, white guy and I sure can lie!
I don't talk to brothers (you know why!)
A lobbyist walks in I gotta get a little taste
of the cash that's in my face,
I get sprung, wanna pull in the dough
It gets me so hot you know!
It's for power and cash that I'm caring
I'm hooked and I won't be sharing
I'm a real Good Ol' Boys fixture,
So now do ya get da picture?

I thought there was an arrangement where if an artist published a song under the aegis of ASCAP or BMI that anyone was free to play that song, provided they payed the tithe to ASCAP or BMI to play songs in a public venue.

In other words, if the Gingrich Campaign is paid up with ASCAP, they can play Eye of the Tiger all they want, even if the writers of that song disagree vehemently with Mr. Gingrinch's politics. The writers could go their own and not deal with ASCAP, which I kind of doubt they did, and hence retain more control over their works, but then they are on their own and lack ASCAP's "muscle" in getting the tithe paid.

If the Gingrich people are not paid up with ASCAP or BMI, well, some lame capitalists they are and Mr. Gingrinch doesn't deserve to run for President on account of legal ignorance.

I thought there was an arrangement where if an artist published a song under the aegis of ASCAP or BMI that anyone was free to play that song, provided they payed the tithe to ASCAP or BMI to play songs in a public venue.

Perhaps the creator should have demanded better compensation from the publisher when providing said work to the publisher? Or better yet, perhaps the creator shouldn't plan to make money selling copies of their work, but on actually 'creating' work.

Umm... okay, that doesn't account for the fact that some content generates revenue for years.

Yes, the issue is whether it should be locked up/monopolized by one party or allowed to the greater society for use by anyone to further expand on it.

I agree with shortening the copyright term. It's silly. However, the "it's not a real job" argument is, for lack of a better term, dumb. Cut him out of the profits generated from the content he's created and all you've done is hurt the little guy and give more money to the corps. Brilliant.

The profit from a copy argument is still a vestige of the pre-digital days of music labels controlling everything. There are no profits from copied digital works. They cost nothing to create and and can be infinitely created. They have no value in and of themselves.

There are profits to be made from 'convenient delivery' of digital works...see iTunes. There are profits to be made using digital works to drive people to buy scarce physical things like concert tickets, t-shirts and other merchandise.

See xkcd.com. A free online comic that built up enough fans to be able to sell physical copies of something that is widely available for free. LOLCats is another site doing fairly well by providing something for free.

The little guy has never had it so good as today. The old gate keepers (RIAA/MPAA/publishers) that controlled who would be successful and who wouldn't are becoming irrelevant.

Show me any significant cost in creating a 'copy' of a digital file, that wouldn't already have been spent by the computer already being turned on. Any cost of electricity or wear on the equipment is so small as to be utterly meaningless.

Original content certainly costs money to create, but digital COPIES of that content do not cost anything to create.